A shorter review than normal for this one, since I'm sure I've made it perfectly clear throughout my LibraryThing tenure my feelings for the source novel. (See my tag, "The Greatest Novel Ever Written," for instance.) So rather than do my typical summarize-and-review, I'm simply going to point out interesting differences between Nabokov's screenplay and his original work.

For starters, and it may have been the intervening years since my last read of Lolita that did this, but I was impressed by how the screenplay seemed to more clearly elucidate the points of the plot. The story seemed far easier to follow, perhaps because it was Nabokov's task to explain in many places rather than describe (the description would have been the director's job, after all). The result is a very lucid work that pairs well as a primer of sorts to the novel.

The characters too are very different, most notably Humbert, and I'm not quite sure how well it works here. The intense narcissism of the first-person narrative in the novel is what makes it so brilliant: we are stunned by how much we like and care about a monster like him. But the screenplay sees him from a distance, and for much of the early goings, even during his attempts at courting Lolita, he seems detached and a bit distant. I imagine this was intentional, and that there's more to decipher when comparing the two works, but the screenplay Humbert lacked the same kind of "grab" that the novel's character did.

The descriptions are nothing short of stunning, and very much on par with the novel. Nabokov knows how to paint a scene, and particularly the moments where Humbert and Lolita are traveling through the American countryside are just as evocative as they were in the novel.

Is it wrong to read this merely in comparison? Perhaps. But I can't really help it, considering how strongly I feel about Lolita as a novel and a work of art. The screenplay is strong, sure, but I can't help feeling it's lesser than the novel. And that's fine. The fact that it can function as something that pairs nicely with and plays off its source material makes it a fascinating and worthwhile read anyway.